Sunday, July 27, 2014

Took a look on Genealogy Bank and found obits for potentially 3 out of the 4 unknown children born to Patrick & Annie that died young. Most of these obits however named the father Patrick "K."; all the recent info rec'd indicates that Patrick's middle name was Timothy. The last born child, Leo Timothy Mullin, has his father's middle name. The 3 children whose obits I found were named James Leo [I don't think Leo was that common and it was also the name of Patrick & Annie's last child]; Andrew P. [Annie's brother was named Andrew, and P could stand for Patrick]; and Joseph P. [middle name Patrick again].

I studied the city directory entries I'd extracted for Patrick in Baltimore from 1882 through the early 1900s. I was able to match 2 out of 3 addresses to the childrens' obits. [The other obit did not specify whether or not the address shown for the funeral was the parents' home address, and it was not an address shown anywhere in the Patrick Mullin listings.] Most of the city directories listed Patrick with no middle initial. However the 1895 entry had him listed under both surnames Mullen and Mullin, same address as the 1895 obit for his son; the Mullin listing showed the middle initial "K". The 1884 listing showed Patrick K; the following year he was listed at the same address, no middle initial. The same for the 1898 and 1899 listings. There were various Patrick Mullins listed in the Baltimore directories over the years, some of which were fairly easy to eliminate. The above were the only listings for Patrick with the middle initial "K", and they matched the probable addresses for "my" Patrick.

Date-wise, the obits indicate birthdates for 3 children which fit in pretty well with the estimated birthdates of the Mullin children listed in the federal censuses. There are one or two instances where a date does not fit, but the Keys family tree in those cases does show different birthdates for those siblings. The federal censuses are not always accurate; not sure where the info came from for the Keys database though.

While still researching, I am going to tentatively add the 3 children who died young to my database.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

My great-grandmother Mary "Minnie" McKenney Anderson had a sister Annie and a brother Andrew. [No news on Andrew.] Annie married Patrick Mullin, an Irish immigrant, and per federal censuses they had 11 children, half of whom died young [and are unnamed so far]. I was able to follow the boys in censuses and military records, but did not have the married names of the girls for the longest time. I eventually found Annie, widowed, living with married daughter Ellen Bender - and that was it.

Recently I was contacted by Nancy, granddaughter of son Leo Mullin. So exciting! She sent me a picture of his mother Annie - here she is, side by side with a picture of her sister [my g-grandmother] Mary:

Then the other day I did a quick search on familysearch.org and found Annie Mullin's Will online - naming her surviving children, including married daughters! I haven't had a lot of luck finding the married daughters in the censuses, but followed up with a lookup on Ancestry and found a public tree for the Keys family - one of the married daughters. Family history says Annie Mullin's oldest daughter married, moved to Canada and had many children. The Keys family tree did show a date of death, in Ontario Canada, for that daughter - yahoo!

Naturally with all this new info came new questions - such as, Annie's 1933 Will stating she wanted her home to be rented to the daughter who later died in Canada. Had she not moved to Canada yet? Her date of death is shown as 1977, and she married [or at least left home] between 1900-1910 [per federal census]. She may have returned to Maryland temporarily at her mother's death, then returned and later died in Canada - but then why the rental in Maryland? Oops--it was not the Canadian daughter who was named to rent mother's house...

There was another Mullin family in Baltimore during the same time as Annie's husband Patrick - in fact I think the Bernard Mullin with whom Patrick appeared to live and work as a recent immigrant, may have been his brother or another close relative. Patrick's first [known] child was named John Bernard Mullin. But, research on Patrick Mullin's antecedents comes second to that of his and Annie's children.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Found the baptism of two [known] Spence children at familysearch.org today. Using the batch number of the records, I checked to see if there were any more children listed by the same parents [John Spence and wife Teresa shown as "Tracy"]: none found. Meandered over to ancestry.com and found the baptism record for another Spence child, one I'd previously found in historic newspapers unnamed as an infant who died young. Ancestry however had the child's name [William Henry Spence] and referred to the same batch number as the first two! I tried various searches but was unable to locate the record in that batch.

The two daughters whose baptism records I found are assumed to have been twins, as their ages were the same in the 1850 census. The baptism records show they were baptised on the same date at 4 or 5 years of age [May 1830]. Elizabeth Jane Spence still lived at home at 1850; her [supposed] twin Mary Catharine was listed last in the household, which I took to mean she had lived at home within the census reporting period but was no longer there. Have not found a marriage or death record for her yet.

William Henry Spence died July 1833, age 3 months. He was baptised June 1833, perhaps because he was not expected to live very long.

There was one [known] older son and perhaps two more unknown Spence children that would fit in the family structure.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

In the interest of recording the little tidbits of information told to me over the years about the Anderson / McKenney side of the family:

Mary [McKenney] Anderson was a seamstress; she took in sewing from Philadelphia while she lived in New York City.

William Anderson, father of my grandmother Gwen & great-aunt Elizabeth, is said to have carried Gwen around on a pillow because she was so small when she was born. [She was a tiny woman as an adult, as well - wore a shoe size so small she had to special-order them from Gimbels department store, where she worked after being widowed.]

Lillian Anderson, sister of Gwen and Elizabeth, died from pneumonia at age 27 in New York City; she was engaged to be married.

Margaret [Anderson] Butcher, daughter of Margaret & Frank Anderson, granddaughter of William & Mary [McKenney] Anderson, is said to perhaps have whatever "family papers" remain of her grandparents; her brother Frank, I believe, at one time asked his sister about them with no response. I hope no family history is being discarded!

ANDERSON / SPENCE / MCKENNEY, 1800'S

The family and ancestors of my paternal grandmother have remained, for the most part, a mystery. Each new bit of information is gleaned over a period of years! They were not well-to-do, were of Irish and/or Scots extraction, with one branch of the family emigrating to Baltimore from Germany [perhaps what was once Hanover] in the early 1800's. This blog will highlight both the "new finds" and the "dead-ends" on these families. [Ongoing genealogy research ...]